


long live

by eyemoji



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, M/M, Peter is dead, Royalty, prince martin advisor jon, the king is dead long live the king
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21868228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemoji/pseuds/eyemoji
Summary: It’s a rather long story, but let’s start with this: the king is dead.The king is dead, and I killed him.Martin will killmeif he finds out.--two words: spooky royalty.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	long live

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as a prompt fill for @elfgrunge. people seemed to like it, so i expanded it. now it might.. have a plot? i'd like to make this a limited run, since i've got too many open works right now, but this was too fun to pass up. enjoy crown prince martin and his grumpy advisor jon, ft. spooky entities and a lovely timothy stoker!

The Forsaken Kingdom hardly gets its name from being a  _ nice _ place to live. Where merchants ought to line the inner streets, stalls lined with glittering and colourful items to draw in visitors from the nearby kingdoms, the paths are grey and the cobblestones are just uneven enough for no carriage to want to linger upon them. Where bards ought to sing of treasured histories long past, the grass and foliage seems to wilt, not one of the blades seeming to want to turn towards each other, eventually leaving only a few sole winners of the race for sun. Where students ought to burn the midnight oil, enthralled by rare texts they just can’t put down, they sit morosely at their desks, trying to summon up the energy to turn another page of mind-numbingly dull work, each presented with a text so different from the others’ that any collaboration would be useless at best and treasonous if not.

And I? I must sit and watch above it all, confined to a position wherein one wrong step (meaning: one step in the direction of any goodwill) would have me booted out the front door before I could plead innocence. It’s a wonder Martin turned out as he did, considering the absolutely toxic environment in which he grew up.

I will not deny that I am grateful for it. If Martin had taken after his mother, or, heaven forbid, his father, I am not sure that I would be standing here today. 

And yet here I am, Jonathan Sims, advisor to Martin Blackwood, the crown prince and heir to the throne of Wurttemberg.

And I have just killed his father.

I feel that at this point I ought to justify myself of two things: First, that Peter Lukas was only Martin’s father by the loosest of definitions, having taken him as ward as a child upon the date of his father’s disappearance, and proceeding to bestow upon him no interaction whatsoever. Martin’s mother, who had agreed to a loveless marriage with the Lukas monarch in order to secure a better future for her son, began to slowly, achingly slowly resent her child for the very service she had bound herself into for him; before too many years had passed, Lukas had her sent to an asylum not some distance away from the palace. This served the dual purpose of isolating Martin further from the rest of the world, a tactic he would not recognize for many years to be intentional.

(It does set off a queer little affectation in my heart to think of him attempting to visit her over the years, only to be turned away by the very same guards who had once snuck him sweets under threat of being found out, whose claims of his mother’s lack of interest only served to dig those hooks of betrayed affection further into his chest.)

Second, as you may have by now surmised, I tell the truth wholly and uninterruptedly when I say that, whatever my actions towards his excuse of a father, I mean Martin Blackwood, soon-to-be-crowned King of Wurttemberg, no harm from a single bone within-- or without-- my body. (If Mister Hopworth decides to take it up with Martin, he shall have to go through me. Again.) Whatever the new King may come to fear, I solemnly can swear to the absolute truth that he will never come to find such vicious horror in me, and, were he to do so, I would consider it an utmost failing of my duty as his sworn aide. Fifteen years I have served by his side, from when I was but a child myself, though a man in the name of the law.

I would not jeopardize that for the world; I would not jeopardize  _ him _ for the universe and all it encompasses.

Perhaps my actions were rash, in the disposal of his father, but I had my reasons, which I am still too hesitant to put into writing upon these pages. Let it be enough for now for me to affirm that they were and continue to be in Martin’s best interests, as I have always acted, though upon this point he may not always agree (He does have a tendency towards the petty and stubborn, though I cannot find it within me to entirely extinguish all sparks of fondness that arise from that particular root.)

But why, the sharper-witted amongst you readers may be inclined to query, why put into physical evidence words that could be used to end you; why admit, even to the ink and page, that you have committed such a heinous and treacherous crime? 

Let it be known that I, Jonathan Sims, on this day, am afraid, not of the consequences that would accompany being found out-- a short rotation in the darkest dungeons this palace has to offer, followed by a brutal execution, no doubt-- but of seeing the expression upon Martin’s face if he were to ever find out that I carried out this scheme without his knowledge. 

But how could I ever have confided in him? Our relationship has always been such that he, far too accommodating than ever would have been expected of a man of his significance and stature, has put aside his own troubles, of which there are many, and deep, in order to hear me out with mine; he has done his utmost best to provide for me, and ensure that I continue to be comfortable, and it is only right that I return the favor. It is only recently that I began to suspect a way that I might do so that fell beyond the scope of my official duties, and now that the deed is done, it only remains for me to conceal it.

I am not a spirit of lies, of deception; I carry falsehoods on my tongue as if they were anvils and I the weakest man in the kingdom. My hope is that if I reveal myself to someone else, something else, then my conscience will be free enough to lessen that weight somewhat, at least during the course of my daily interactions. Since there is not a soul I can trust with this particular piece of information, this page is the closest thing I have to absolution; hopefully it shall serve me well. It will also stand in as a planning tool, should the time for flight ever come to light.

I hope that day will never dawn upon me, for deserting Martin would be akin to giving up my soul, a deal with the devil that lurks within this palace in order to save my own skin; myself reduced to a stranger’s mark adorning these halls and nothing more.

End entry one,

Jonathan

* * *

If Timothy Stoker ends up in his courtroom for ‘unseemly conduct unbefitting a knight of the Crown’ one more time, Martin thinks savagely, rubbing his temples, the man might just find himself set to the sidelines for the rest of his term here.

This is a lie, he acknowledges almost immediately after thinking it; Tim is one of the recruits that had shown the most potential from day one, and though his...extracurricular activities have sent Martin scrambling to assuage one affronted Duke or another with regards to his newly liberated offspring, there’s no denying that he’s among both the most loyal and talented of his batch.

Still. This routine of prince’s-court is getting a little monotonous. The voice of the prosecutor is somehow managing to be both shrill and dull, and more than once Martin finds himself slipping off in the middle of a phrase, only to catch himself, snap awake, and look guiltily around the room to make sure no one else’s caught his mistake. He hasn’t spotted anyone looking--  _ yet _ \-- but it’s only a matter of time.

Jon is conspicuously absent from the proceedings this time, too, which adds to the dullness, since a good amount of Martin’s enjoyment of these little meetings comes from the way Jon snipes about Tim’s conduct. To hear him tell it, Sir Stoker is the scourge of the court, and, if Jon’s feeling particularly vindictive, ‘practically treasonous for the amount of cavorting he does with visitors from other kingdoms.’ 

Martin wonders if he’s just jealous.

What  _ is _ uncommon about today’s proceedings, though, is Jon’s presence-- well, lack thereof, considering how much of a stickler the man is for protocol. Martin frowns halfway through an impassioned speech about courtroom decorum-- he doesn’t miss Tim’s eye roll and wink directed his way halfway through it, but that’s not the source of his headache-- and glances once more at the doorway. 

No sign of Jon.

He sighs again, and rests his head on his hand, massaging his forehead vigorously as if it’ll speed up the process. They all know the drill here: The offended party spends a good half hour droning on about Tim’s supposed offenses; Martin tells him off from a script he’s now got memorized, though in actuality he couldn’t care less what Tim does with his off hours; Jon makes some snarky little comment; and then they all disperse, with nothing tangible to be shown for an hour of his time wasted.

He’s long been convinced that all of this is set up specifically to fill his time, considering the number of offenses that can get delegated to prince’s court over to being heard in the king’s court proper are low, and even then are generally boring, inoffensive things that rarely require harsh punishment, at least in Martin’s opinion. Lately, he’s been trying to make it a game, see how many poor citizens caught at thieving in order to feed their families he can sneak a “punishment” to that involves vegetable gardening, or some other task around the castle that can easily be converted to a full-time job, if they’ll have it (Martin always makes sure to follow up, to see that if there’s other commitments for them to attend to that the family is as provided for as he can manage without alerting his father. It’s a game in the sense he’s making decisions he knows his father would disapprove of, but he’s very aware of the need to avoid getting any unaware citizens caught in the crossfire of said disapproval.)

In this particular instance, however, there’s not really much he can do to either make the time pass more quickly, nor any clever plans to weave in the spaces created by his father’s oversight. Sir Stoker may be one of his favourite knights, but there’s only so much leeway he can allow him in the courtroom itself, and, besides, he’s long had a feeling he actually  _ enjoys _ these events. Trying to set a record for courtroom appearances, Martin suspects.

As long and painfully drawn out as it is, it only feels longer when Martin turns to his left to whisper something about how he wishes the prosecutor would have learned to more concisely deliver his points before he entered the legal profession, only to be reminded by the empty seat to his left that he doesn’t even have Jon’s presence to steady him, this time. (Or, well, to have Jon’s presence to steady, if he’s being honest.)

It is, of course, just then that the side entrance to the courtroom bursts open, followed by a small, near-imperceptible squeak of an apology before Jon himself is ushered through the door by the guard holding it open. Something warm blooms in Martin’s chest as he picks his way through the cluster of officials lined up along the back and settles into his seat, hands folded prim and proper in his lap as if he hasn’t just interrupted half the proceedings. Martin feels his lips tug up into a grin almost as if by reflex, and he turns to whisper something, the question of  _ where have you been _ , written all over his face. Jon, surprisingly, flinches-- and then shakes his head before Martin’s even opened his mouth. He continues to shake his head slightly for another thirty seconds, shrinking into himself for half a beat before, after a darting glance towards the door, he takes a deep breath and forces his shoulders to relax.

Martin retreats into his throne, trying not to let the hurt unfurl across his face. He sneaks glances at Jon as the proceedings continue, trying to see if he can draw out what it is that’s bothering him-- but his expression is inscrutable like it has never been before, and Martin’s brow creases in concern.

Hopefully, he’ll be able to coaxe whatever it is out of Jon afterwards. It’s very likely Jon will tell him off, warding him away by stating it’s none of his business, but… he’d like to help, if he can. Even if that just means listening. Jon’s put up with so much on his end all these years after all, and it only seems right. 

He settles back into his seat, mind far away from the case in front of him, itching to turn to Jon and relieve him of his struggle. Even Tim is starting to look bored, the initial novelty of being back in the courtroom having been finally worn down by the number of insults to his honor being flung his way.

The prosecutor is just nearly finished with his grand speech, gesturing at Tim to a level that is almost theatrically exaggerated as he splutters out a final condemnation, when the side door is once again burst through, this time by a courier dressed in a misshapen vest, as if it had been thrown on haphazardly, Martin notes--

And then the courier reaches him, and leans down to whisper something in his ear, and by the time he’s pulled away, Martin’s mind is already whirling a million miles away, eyes foggy, unfocused. He doesn’t hear Jon’s concerned  _ “Martin?” _ or feel the tilt of the Earth underneath his feet.

He just fades.

**Author's Note:**

> @justasmalltownai


End file.
